February 13, 1999

Clinton Is Acquitted Decisively by Senate on Both Charges

By ALISON MITCHELL

ASHINGTON -- The Senate on Friday acquitted President William
Jefferson Clinton on two articles of impeachment, falling short of
even a majority vote on either of the charges against him, perjury
and obstruction of justice.

After a harrowing year of scandal and investigation, the
five-week-long Senate trial of the president -- only the second in
the 210-year history of the Republic -- came to a climax shortly
after noon when the roll calls began that would determine Clinton's
fate.

"Is respondent William Jefferson Clinton guilty or not
guilty?" asked Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in his
gold-striped black robe. In a hushed chamber, with senators
standing one by one to pronounce Clinton guilty or not guilty, the
Senate rejected the charge of perjury 55-45, with ten Republicans
voting against conviction.

It then split 50-50 on a second article accusing Clinton of
obstruction of justice in concealing his affair with Monica
Lewinsky. Five Republicans broke ranks on the obstruction of
justice charge. No Democrats voted to convict on either charge, and
it would have taken a dozen of them, and all 55 Republicans, to
reach the two-thirds majority of 67 senators required for
conviction.

Rehnquist announced the acquittal of the nation's 42nd president
at 12:39 p.m. "It is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said
William Jefferson Clinton be and he hereby is acquitted of the
charges in the said articles," he said. Almost immediately the
mood in the Senate lightened.

As required by the Senate's impeachment rules, Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright was formally notified of the Senate's
judgment.

Clinton responded by once again declaring himself "profoundly
sorry" for his actions and words that had thrown the nation into a
13-month ordeal. "This can be and this must be a time of
reconciliation and renewal for America," he said in a brief
appearance in the White House Rose Garden.

Yet for all the hopes of healing, the bitterness and turmoil of
the past months were underscored when the Senate side of the
Capitol had to be cleared by police because of a bomb scare,
shortly after the trial ended and just as senators had begun a
series of news conferences.

Just before the bomb scare, the Senate, by a 56-43 vote,
rebuffed an effort by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to force a
vote before the day had ended on a censure measure that would
rebuke Clinton for "shameful, reckless and indefensible"
behavior.

Even many of those who chose to acquit Clinton on Friday
delivered stinging judgments of him while concluding that his
evasions and attempts to conceal a sexual relationship with a
former White House intern did not constitute the kind of high
crimes the nation's Founding Fathers had contemplated when they
wrote the impeachment clause of the Constitution.

"In voting to acquit the president, I do so with grave
misgivings for I do not mean in any way to exonerate this man,"
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of the Republicans to break with
her party, said in a statement.

"He lied under oath," she said. "He sought to interfere with
the evidence; he tried to influence the testimony of key witnesses.
And while it may not be a crime, he exploited a very young
star-struck employee whom he then proceeded to smear in an attempt
to destroy her credibility, her reputation, her life."

Some of the Democrats who had stayed so staunchly at Clinton's
side throughout the impeachment saga warned grimly that he should
not see his acquittal as political vindication. "This has been a
long, tortured trial,' said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.C. "There are
no winners. The president should take no solace from this."

The Republicans who wanted to remove him from office were far
harsher, raising questions of how Clinton and the congressional
majority that pursued his impeachment will ever reconcile across
the remaining two years of Clinton's term.

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, called Clinton a man "with a
capacity to lie about anything." And Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the
majority leader, quoted the words of the great southern novelist,
William Faulkner, to make clear his profound distrust of Clinton.
"One of the sayings that's always guided my life is, 'I will
witness your advent and judge of your sincerity,"' he told
reporters. "I guess you could say, in a little bit more of a
Reagan way, trust and verify."

Until now the only impeachment trial of a president had taken
place in 1868 when Andrew Johnson escaped conviction by a single
vote. That trial left in its wake a weakened presidency and came to
be viewed over time as a partisan vendetta, a term many Democrats
applied to this case, too.

It will now be up to historians to judge what happened in this
impeachment, the first one to be conducted under the independent
counsel law enacted after Watergate. For now, the impeachment drive
has left the Republican party at record lows in public opinion
polls, while Clinton has retained some of the higest job approval
ratings of his presidency. But many in both parties believe that
public opinion could shift with the passage of time, now that
Clinton is out of danger of removal.

Far from ending the national ordeal, Friday's verdict is likely
to propel forward a new cultural and political debate in the 2000
elections over morality and the right to privacy, creating sharp
lines of demarcation between the political parties, which have seen
so many of their policy differences diluted in the Clinton years.

Some of the signs of the emerging debate were visible Friday as
both sides tried to take stock and assess the meaning of a vote
that saw neither article even gain majority support.

Democrats and some Republicans argued that the votes signaled
that the House had erred in sending forth impeachment articles
against the will of the public and on a partisan vote in December.

But Randy Tate, the executive director of the Christian
Coalition, said the House prosecution, in defiance of public
opinion, "will be seen by history as an example of true American
greatness."

Tate deplored Clinton's acquittal, saying that "children now
have the lesson that lying, cheating and breaking the law are
permissible on the pathway to success."

The failure to reach a majority, said Sen. Edward Kennedy,
D-Mass., "reflected quite clearly the weakness of the House
managers' case." He said, "These articles should never have been
brought in the first place."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who is weighing a presidential bid,
asked whether the many senators who were once prosecutors were
"not deeply disturbed by an independent counsel grilling a sitting
president of the United States about his personal sex life, based
on information from illegal phone recordings?"

The seeds of the impeachment saga were planted five years ago
when Kenneth Starr was named independent counsel to investigate a
real estate deal known as Whitewater. In January 1998 the
investigation took a new tack to allegations that Clinton had had
an affair with an intern and induced her to submit a false
affidavit in the sexual harassment suit brought against him by Paul
Corbin Jones.

In a deposition in the Paula Jones case taken on January 19,
1998, Clinton laid the groundwork for the impeachment case by
denying he had had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky and sitting
silently as his lawyer brandished her own false affidavit to
support him.

In a finger-wagging televised appearance, Clinton denied to the
nation that he had ever had sexual relations with "that woman, Ms.
Lewinsky." And for almost eight months he steadfastly deceived
aides and the country alike about his relationship with the intern.
One aide told a grand jury that the president had called her a
"stalker."

Only in August, after it became known that Ms. Lewinsky had
saved a stained blue dress that provided irrefutable evidence of
their affair, did he tell a grand jury and the American public that
he had had an "inappropriate relationship" with the young woman.

His belated and grudging confession did not stay the
prosecutors. On Sept. 9, catching lawmakers off-guard, Starr
delivered to Congress 36 boxes containing a report and supporting
evidence of what he called "substantial and credible information"
that Clinton may have committed impeachable offenses.

The House vote that began the investigation that led to the
first impeachment proceedings since Watergate was 363-63,
bipartisan and overwhelming. But the House Judiciary Committee, one
of the most polarized panels in the House, split almost immediately
along party lines as the committee released the entire Starr
report. Soon all the intimate and lurid details of Clinton's affair
were available on the Internet, and the public could see the
videotape of Clinton's grand jury appearance.

The disputes were heightened as each side looked toward the
midterm elections. Republicans lost five House seats, in a
repudiation thought to be partly a result of the focus on
investigation and scandal.

Stunned by the election and determined to get the case over with
rapidly, the committee returned in lameduck session and approved
four articles of impeachment along party lines, accepting Starr's
case without ever calling witnesses.

In December, after an acrid and bitter debate, the House
narrowly approved two of the articles in near party-line votes.

From the start of the trial on January 7, the Senate tried
assiduously to avoid the partisan bitterness of the House. Fearful
of public backlash, Senate Republicans forced the House prosecutors
to scale back their witness list to only three and allowed only
depositions to be taken. Democrats and many Republicans rebelled
against the idea of Ms. Lewinsky testifying in the well of the
Senate.

The Republicans also insisted on keeping the Senate's final
deliberations behind closed doors. And for three days this week,
the senators debated in private.

When the doors opened again Friday at noon, the exhausted
senators were openly longing to return to legislation.

In the hushed chamber, senators stood one after another to
pronounce Clinton guilty or not guilty. Some barely whispered their
verdict. Others shouted it out with emphasis.

There was barely a stir at the moment when Sen. Patrick Leahy,
D-Vt., cast the 34th vote of not guilty that guaranteed Clinton's
acquittal on the first count of perjury, or when Sen. Carl Levin,
D-Mich., cast the vote that assured his acquittal on the second
count. But a low murmer broke out toward the end of the first roll
call when the declaration of "not guilty" by Sen. John Warner,
R-Va., brought to ten the number of Republicans who broke with
their party on the charge of perjury.

As the trial ended, and Lott bid farewell to Rehnquist, the
relief was palpable. "I would like to close with our traditional
Mississippi parting: Y'all come back soon," the majority leader
told the chief justice. He quickly added as laughter broke out,
"But I hope that's not taken the wrong way. And not for an
occasion like this one."